by Gareth Porter
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted at IPS
22 May, 2011
WASHINGTON, May 31, 2011 (IPS) – The leaked reports over the past two weeks of a series of meetings between U.S. officials and a Taliban figure close to leader Mullah Omar seemed to point to real progress toward a negotiated settlement of the war in Afghanistan.
But in fact the talks are part of a Barack Obama administration strategy aimed at putting pressure on the Taliban leadership in part by dividing it from Pakistan as well as bolstering Obama’s domestic support for the war.
